Entrepreneur: Personal grassroots webmaster dead mobile internet Vista Unlimited

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April 7, 2005, Xiamen, the first Chinese personal webmaster meeting, after the visit to the big Golden Gate cruise, a webmaster proudly said: "If the ship sank, China's internet industry will be paralyzed." "This is not completely exaggerated, the site of more than 100 webmasters, almost all in the Alexa global rankings of 2000, and at that time all the Chinese personal webmaster hands of the flow added up, according to the most conservative estimates, but also more than the entire Chinese Internet traffic 1/3."

Webmaster-China's internet industry, a group of grassroots people, at that time has become a people can not ignore the commercial force. 2004, Cai won the first as a webmaster to obtain venture capital, and before and after, more stationmaster is stand out, Hao123 's xingping, 51.com Shengdong East, 58.com Yiu Jingbo, as well as sing Chuang think Dai, and so on, to these people as representatives, An Internet personal webmaster's ethnic groups seem to suddenly emerge from the surface, they have the flow of Taobao, Baidu, Google scramble to rob the object, they seem to suddenly become a kind of scarce resources, become extremely important.

Unfortunately, this is just an illusion.

July 20, 2009, when the "Master of the King" Cai to "entrepreneurial" said: "Personal webmaster of the Times, in my first time to engage in webmaster assembly when it is over." This is not to say that there will be no webmaster after China, but that today the individual again to do a website and do a national famous, there are tens of millions of of users are not likely. "This judgment is certainly brutal, and looking back is the truth."

If the internet is an ocean, then stationmaster is a group of duckweed, although they have a large flow, but mostly by their own power, interest. They do not have the unique technology, innovative models and strong resources, which makes them lack the ability to grow independently. This means that they must rely on an external platform in order to turn traffic into revenue and move from Taobao to Baidu and Google. However, for a highly commercial platform, traffic is only the primitive accumulation period of the necessary process, when the platform from the point of view, the owners of the hands of the flow will inevitably go to depreciation. But in the increasingly fierce competition, strict regulation of the Chinese web World, stationmaster This group of most completely not adapt.

July 15, the China Internet Network Information Center (CNNIC) released the 26th China Internet Development Statistics report shows: As of June 2010, the number of Web sites dropped to 2.79 million (January 2010 figure of 3.23 million). In other words, the total number of Chinese websites has "evaporated" by 440,000 in a short period of time. The vast majority of them are individual stationmaster open. Whether subjective or objective, the fittest have begun.

In a sense, the webmaster has the essence of China's Internet development, but also fully embodies its deep-rooted evil. It is no exaggeration to say that the popularity of China's Internet and the development process, the impetus of millions of stationmaster is vital. Just as the digital revolution in the United States is driven by a generation of geek (geeks).

The United States has geek (geek), China has stationmaster, this looks like two different subculture group, to shape the respective Internet business culture but has the enormous influence. Geeks are free-loving hippies, intelligent elites, cynical, computer heroes who want to change the world with technology, and Stationmaster is the million-root of China's small and medium-sized cities, shrewd and active keen, eager to change their fate through personal struggle. They do not resist the creation of restless points, will turn over the wall to make money by sticking holes. And the same is that they are in the bones of the heroic feelings and the rebellion against the mainstream values.

So far, the American geek culture has developed for almost 50 years, from the earliest Microsoft founder Bill Gates, Apple II computer developer Steve Voznik, founder of Viaweb, Y Combinator Investment Co founder Paul Greham to later Anderson, Evan Williams, Yang Zhiyuan, and then to today's Zuckerberg, generation after generation continue to give "Geek" this new word to give new meaning.

In China, the rise of webmaster culture has only 10 years, subject to the environment and its own conditions, the last generation of webmaster group has reached the end of the decline. But moving into the mobile internet era is as much an opportunity as it is for the young to be even more excited than the desktop internet 10 years ago.

In the past two months, "entrepreneur" interviewed Sing founder Dai, CNZZ founder Cai wins, 58.com founder Yiu Jingbo, a listen to music network founder Dushe, Shenzhen Boya founder Zhang Wei, the laggard community webmaster Dong Qin Peak, Blue ideal community webmaster Zeng Jianyang, Jiangsu and Yang community webmaster Xu, Hangzhou 19 Floor Community general Manager Lin Yu, k666.com, Fast Code network webmaster Jijun, Tianjin Belle bar female webmaster Tri Yi, Chongqing shopping crazy webmaster High cherry, such as more than 10 Internet webmaster or once webmaster. We also saw the top geek in America, Max Levinchen, the technology founder of PayPal, and senior internet watchers such as Xie.

We believe that the era of a grassroots webmaster has ended, but will not as the 1951 "World War II", said MacArthur farewell speech: "Veterans will never die, he will only quietly retreat ..." ”

How will the webmaster spirit of the new era be born? #p # subtitle #e#

Category III People

The first civilians to do the station why willing to do on the Internet, he is often not open the online people, he may communicate problems, if you want to form a team, this character will become a short board. --Yiu Jingbo

Let's start with the most basic question, who is the webmaster? What kind of crowd is this?

The word "stationmaster" originates from English "webmaster", originally intended to be "network administrator", who will be the translation of this technology to the word webmaster has been unable to research, according to Dai recalls, 1996 he on the Hui more than the network when there is this name, and many of the webmaster later became the Internet field of the man, For example, at that time, MA is Shenzhen pony-soft station webmaster, Baijun is Zhuhai West Point station stationmaster, Wang Juntao (old Banyan) is Fuzhou station stationmaster, at that time, "stationmaster" more seems to be a skilled network knight, virtual world in the reality of contact person, and today, we talk about stationmaster, More from a business perspective.

In the late 90 's, the Internet tide swept over China, the "turtle" represented by Zhang Chaoyang became the most dazzling digital hero in the wave. Since the new century, horse, MA, Chen and other local elites to rise steadily and continuously, become a more powerful sea-goers, "turtle" and "turtle" are the mainstream face of China's Internet, they define the pattern of China's Internet and trends, but in addition to these two groups of people, the Chinese Internet business world there are a third category of people, They are personal stationmaster.

Whether "turtle" or "tortoise", they are in the business before, have already in the society to know oneself, even can be said to belong to the elite class, Ding Lei came from the telecommunications system, Charles Zhang, Robin Li is the United States "turtle", Chen was a young senior of the state-owned enterprises, MA in High-tech companies to do technical director, Ma Yun is a university teacher. and personal webmaster is different, they start surfing the internet time, is far from the social elite. For example, xingping only junior high school culture, before doing hao123 is to install a computer, tube Internet cafes, Dai University has 15 courses fail, contempt for university education, Cai graduated from high school to do business, Dushe sophomore was expelled from school; Jijun Junior High school graduation, do fitter, put stall; Play a regular job. In simple terms, many webmasters began to do the internet, and did not conform to the mainstream values of success, or webmaster themselves do not like, nor adapt to that value.

Before 2000, it was the embryonic period of the Internet. Personal webmaster purely interest as the starting point, the production of simple Web pages, only for the lovers to exchange and display, no income is also full of passion.

Dai do discuz! Just feel that BBS can let strangers communicate, do this community software is a sense of achievement; Dong Qin Peak will be more than 70 to find foreign free space strategy posted out, just want to give some help to the novice; Zeng Jianyang to do the blue ideal is to give web designers a space for communication; Xu in the reality of food and clothing without worry, Do the Jinan community is just to meet their own gallop network hobby; Jijun simpler, just feel the network is very free, apply for a free space to do it, like it, there is no other reason.

2000 ~2005 years, outlaws in the early days, AdSense single-handedly, by virtue of the needs of the grassroots user grasp, the use of the Chinese Internet to promote the application and services, such as the Xingping hao123 Web site Navigation Station, Huajun software download station, and some of the individual owners who have the flow began to earn a lot of income

Since 2005, this is a fully commercialized era. Webmaster community began to divide, a few have the ability to self-evolution webmaster began to get venture capital, set up a team, looking for a profit model.

May 29, 2010, the fifth session of the Internet Webmaster assembly, more than 2,500 webmaster flocking to Beijing East three ring side of the Great Wall Hotel, far more than the capacity of the conference hall, even the hotel lobby and the door are crowded with the long-awaited crowd. When the Speaker Tang June, Kai-Fu Lee to the scene, all received a star-style treatment, applause.

This makes Internet veteran observer Xie a little angry. "Many of the webmaster is not what entrepreneurs, I think they have no foothold in the real world, but all day in the internet dream, like Carnival in the entrepreneurial, not very strange?" Entrepreneurship should be very lonely, but also a lot of pay, not now always say how I do not make money ah, why do you make money ah? There are countless people in Silicon Valley who don't make money, but he's still a very good entrepreneur, and that's a lot of bad sense. "#p # subtitle #e#

Is "change" a poison?

Since 2005, personal stations have become more and more difficult to do. Although the personal station has done tens of thousands of, but finally can become the commercial station may only 5%, perhaps only 1% people will get the venture capital, does the strong big, other's can only drown out. --Cai

Wang Xiaobo said that life will inevitably go to vulgarity. The internet is also not, stationmaster with interest as the origin of the simple mentality, quickly be commercialized by the tide of variation.

November 2000, the launch of "Mobile Dream Network Business Plan", with an open posture to meet the SP (service Provider, value-added service providers), which not only Sina, Sohu, NetEase and other long-term loss of the portal site to turn a profit, but also directly spawned thousands of different sizes of SP company, It also was born in the air, friends of the century, handheld, Tom Online and several Nasdaq listed companies, but also let the webmaster also won the first bucket of gold.

Mobile Dream Network at the same time open the information channel and telephone payment channel, for SP, more valuable is of course the latter, open payment channel has a more popular name, is the generation of charges. Obviously, the SP needs is a huge amount of users, at this time the webmaster who has the flow quickly became the SP partner. Collaborative approach is very simple, personal site as a front-end, the SP's code and instructions embedded in the Web page, when users browse their site content, the SP's text messages, MMS, color, pictures, friends and other services to attract and register, complete the act of charging, the two sides divided, divided into the proportion from 20% to the highest 60% range.

Since 2001, the big SP, such as Tom's online, has built up its own text-messaging alliance, where the number of websites is hundreds of to tens of thousands, with the best individual sites likely to earn more than 100,000 a month. Dushe said that at that time, a monthly income of tens of thousands of of the personal stationmaster there are many, he 2004 years of personal revenue has been hundreds of thousands of. Many people also think that 2003-2006 is the golden age of personal websites. Yiu Jingbo said: "If you want to select a personal webmaster contribution to the greatest prize, that is not mobile." ”

However, mobile will be billing and procurement power to the SP, bundled and lured to become the SP's conventional means, many services are not confirmed by the user is directly deducted fees, Zeize, produced a great negative effect, with the movement began in 2006, the entire SP industry rapidly decline, To the SP divided into the main income of the webmaster, good time also ended, a large number of stationmaster disappear.

In addition to the text Messaging Alliance, Webmaster's another major source of revenue is the Baidu Alliance, Taobao Alliance and other advertising alliances, but in essence, this is not much different from the message Alliance, are in traffic. Baidu, Taobao and other platform-type sites in the initial need to accumulate users, Baidu needs to resist Google, Taobao need to resist ebay, they are willing to take out real money to buy the owners of the flow of the hands, but when they beat the main competitors, itself has a huge flow of traffic, the webmaster has become a vulnerable group , and not much of the right to speak, a typical example is, in 2009, when Google announced the withdrawal of China, the Baidu Alliance to the owners of the advertising ratio was immediately cut.

But the owners are inseparable from such alliances, because they have a single site's traffic is limited, no scale advantages, can not get advertisers, only through such alliances together, only advertising value, which is why the webmaster are always love and hate Baidu. Dcci and Sing's survey data dramatically illustrates this ambivalence: the next year, 34.9% of personal webmaster intend to join the Baidu Alliance, while 34.6% of the webmaster think that Baidu is the future development of small and medium-sized Web site poses a threat to the Internet Public Enemy.

Congenital defects

Many people do things that are not unique, and there is no competition threshold, playing edge, booing, illegal, like the city of illegal buildings. Illegal construction also has the right to survive, but on the whole it is irregular, did not hear a violation of the building later became a skyscraper. --Xie

The fate of Stationmaster is actually decided after 2005 years.

Since then, the world has been completely different, Tencent, Baidu has been listed, the Giants began to gongchenglvede in the market, more business model with capital support of commercial sites began to rise. At the same time, with the increasingly mainstream of the internet, the government's monitoring of the Internet has gradually strengthened, the industry's threshold is constantly improving.

Although the owners of the single fight have many advantages, but the more to go, this group exposed defects more than its advantages:

1. Narrow Vision, short-sighted

"Chinese webmaster are grassroots, a lot of high school did not graduate, in a small place, do a website, but there are many users, Xingping is representative." "Yiu Jingbo said. Indeed, if you want to choose a Chinese stationmaster's specimen type personage, xingping is more suitable than "Stationmaster King" Cai and "community leader" Dai.

Xingping is almost intuitive to do a hao123, but in the long run, the Web site navigation station does not continue to value, this is a typical example, webmaster can make to meet the needs of grassroots users, simple and direct, but this application usually does not have much room for growth. Xingping in sell hao123 once frankly, he "can't see hao123 Future", Dushe said, "stationmaster to the industry observation is standing in a very small angle", or more pointedly, stationmaster's view is generally relatively narrow.

Early personal web sites are free from fiction, music, pictures, downloads and other simple applications, no one has considered the copyright issue, but the almost no cost of the content of simple piling up, and to obtain users, traffic comes easily, traffic flow to money is also easy, most webmasters will not consider the future development of the road, This doomed most stationmaster not to evolve kinetic energy.

2. Used to fighting alone, no team

Many webmasters have not been managed, and will not manage others, can only manage themselves, not accustomed to team operations, more is the single fight. In the barbaric period of the Internet development, the commercial website is not strong, the individual stationmaster can obtain many users by virtue of a moment's bravery, but mostly cannot be long, when the commercial website starts to develop, the competition intensifies, stationmaster is like stragglers meets the regular army, have no what resistance.

3. Low technical content, no innovation in mode

Most owners have basic technology, but often limited to the production of Web pages and management servers, and lack of resources and funds to find better technical staff, which makes many webmasters can only use the general procedures to set up a website, can not be based on their own needs to develop.

Moreover, stationmaster in commercial often lacks sensitive, what popular, what hot do what, after hao123 popular, appear numerous website navigation station, and continuously subdivide, but its value is very small. In simple terms, adsense have a good ability to imitate, but not in the study of the ability to innovate, in fact, this is the general problem of Internet in China.

4. The operation is not standard, the mentality is impetuous

In the flow of the era of the king, cheating is almost all the required classes, webmaster are naturally sensitive to traffic, such as in the 3721 just appeared, they will buy the popular generic URL keyword guide to their own site, and the site is actually not the slightest relationship with the keyword. Professional Cheating program is not uncommon, through false click to cheat advertising fees is just ordinary things, obviously, this is a kind of the golden goose.

China's oldest old webmaster Chunhui think that attending the first webmaster Congress more than 99% of the webmaster is making money, but if not cheating, then the webmaster may be less than 50% to 70%. In the meantime a small detail is, a new webmaster asked old webmaster, how can better cheat? In the absence of a satisfactory answer, the new webmaster is almost turned away, hello are lazy to play a, old webmaster exclaimed: "Here, I see more is impetuous, is a dream to skyrocketing." ”

Xie said sharply, personal webmaster on the role of China's internet has two aspects: "The positive side is Mickle, the scattered flow into a visible commercial operation of the foundation, the basic operating knowledge of the Internet; But on the other hand, to a large extent, this is also the grey industry chain, rogue Traffic, The irregular business operation such as the ball ball is prevalent, and the obsession. This is both positive and negative. "#p # subtitle #e#

How about a business card change?

Jiuqi years to do, we are all a dark, do what is the first, at that time more courage, sharp effect, now good to do almost by people accounted for, more need is wisdom, the need for in-depth, comprehensive technical innovation. --Xie

As the head of China's largest community platform software provider, Dai is a super webmaster, and he works with large and small webmaster every day. He found that a few years ago a lot of owners in a meeting with a piece of paper, paper written on the name, telephone, but now and everyone to change their business cards, found that everyone is already the CEO of the company. This is an interesting phenomenon, in fact, in addition to the webmaster in this circle, all the webmaster almost no longer call themselves a webmaster.

20 years ago, people leave the unit, to do a little business of the people called the Sea, Dai also remember as a child when the father of the university teacher used this word to introduce the former colleagues, from his impression that the person's head as if engraved on the ' sea ' two words. This is clearly the traditional value system to the different brand, and today, outside the circle, "webmaster" The word is also like an unpleasant label, so that webmasters are difficult to accept.

Tri Yi has a rare high degree of webmaster, she is a professor of biology at Nankai University, parents hope she can study abroad, 2006 summer vacation, she did a female community, when on the webmaster, and gave up the road of scholarship. Cui's business card says "Tianjin Belle Bar CEO", if you go out to see advertisers, she will serve another card, the title is "operations director", why use a different business card? "Although I am the site's boss, webmaster, CEO, but I printed on business cards in the middle of the position, this will enhance the entire team site brand image." "she said. Compared with the old stationmaster, Tri Yi had a clear business plan at the beginning of his business.

"In our circle you introduce me is a webmaster, I feel very happy, because I am a member of you, in the same kind of call I think is a title, but outsiders say stationmaster often often a kind of ridicule taste, I do not want to explain what is a webmaster." "Xu said.

Although Xu is the head of the Jinan community network, but his business card is also "operational director", he has a little bit of literature and youth traces, in fact, he embarked on the commercial road is completely compelled. According to his personality, he prefers to be a cool moderator on the internet, just like his ID number "nomadic".

Jinan-Yang Community Network is not a very well-known site, but there are more than 300,000 registered members, the total number of more than 50 million, the new posting volume of 50,000, solar PV value of more than 1 million times, it is obvious that such a site already has a considerable commercial value, but Xu and his partner Spiegel has never been through the site to make money plans, Because both of them have a good job and have no worries about food and clothing.

2006, a friend of their two set up an advertising company, but the business is not much, Xu on the site opened a few ads, to the friend agent, advertising revenue to take half, out of trust, both sides did not even sign the contract. By 2007, the friend offered to 100,000 of the annual cost of the site's advertising agency, Xu and Spiegel did not want to make money, feel so every year a stable income is good, agreed, and signed a formal contract.

However, Xu never knew how much the site's advertising sales were, the friend later proposed that he wanted to own the site's shares, he was responsible for the operation, Xu and Spiegel agreed again, but they want the friend to invest some money, after all, they have been doing this site for nearly 10 years, but the friend does not agree, The result is noisy, Xu had to come out to do business.

"As our personal webmaster turned to business, in fact, it is not suitable, before the Internet is everyone very much admired by people, or is very pure, or even can say is not to eat the feeling of the world's fireworks, before everyone in the online pursuit of you, but now to go to personally run business, it is difficult for me, even I have a fear of ”

Thankfully, after six months of adaptation; Xu found that the process was not as difficult as it had been imagined, with nearly five hundred thousand or six hundred thousand of the income in the first half of the year, "I found that commercialization does not necessarily undermine its principles, users, businesses and themselves can be happy, I think this sense of achievement is even greater." "Next, Xu plans to completely commercialize the Jinan community network."

And Tri Yi, Xu like, a lot of webmaster began to set up a team, they deliberately in the business world to downplay their webmaster identity, abandon the single fight, began to try to formalize the operation of a company.

Webmaster 2.0

Now there is a huge opportunity, that is, mobile Internet, there will be more different webmaster appear. Mobile internet will appear three of opportunities, the first is the component, now in fact the best personal webmaster are doing components, the second is directly on the phone to do the application; and one is Weibo. --Cai

Jijun is a webmaster assembly madman, like to participate in a variety of webmaster meetings. June 2010, in Hunan Internet Webmaster Conference, he found that the first webmaster meeting in 2005 has less than 10% webmaster, "Most of the webmaster disappeared." But the new webmaster era will come.

Xie the new generation of webmaster into three categories:

The first category may be the use of sing and other general building software, with independent domain names, depending on traffic or combined with E-commerce to earn some revenue, which may account for about 70%.

The second category is for Facebook, Apple and other large platforms to do third-party applications, they do not want to independently conquer, but a larger industry chain in a ring, accounting for about 20%.

The third category is the entrepreneur, this kind has the independent company, the exploration business model, the search venture capital, strives for the bigger, this part may account for less than 10%.

One rumor in the industry is that Dai's sing will be bought by Tencent. This means that China's largest community software platform will be controlled by China's most powerful internet company, although many webmasters lament Sing's desire to be amnesty, leaving out the emotional factors that may not be a good ending in rational business logic.

The current state of the internet in China Tencent, Baidu, Alibaba three strong separation, search Baidu a single big, E-commerce Ali treasure A single big, and Tencent comprehensive strength is strongest, but relatively closed, its search and pat also weak, if the sing income sac, you can get 70% of the community platform, Its traffic and users for search and Pat obviously have great value. and to advertising and E-commerce as the main source of revenue, search and Pat do strong, also means that the market has a balance between Baidu and Taobao power, or, Tencent can be more effective than sing the value of the webmaster, of course, the premise is that Tencent must move to open.

No longer the acquisition of Tencent Sing as a personal webmaster the end of the more appropriate sign of the era, if this platform for personal webmaster services to take refuge in a larger platform, then, this large platform will be the future webmaster-or mobile internet era, individual entrepreneurs survive and development of a very important space.

In essence, the relationship between small and medium Web sites and large platform-type sites has not changed much. Small sites to provide value for large sites, large sites through the open interface for small sites to provide the means of change-search box, or even hyperlinks is not an open interface of the primary form?

The initial value of a small web site is just a disorderly flow, now it has become an accurate conversion of e-commerce users, sticky users of third-party applications, it is clear that the technical content is getting higher, and for the webmaster-or more specifically, the Internet entrepreneur-the requirements are also becoming higher, webmaster times traffic, The new era is the technology, operation, creativity, in a sense, this is the path of the grassroots webmaster evolution.

Xingping is still the best specimen, 2004, he will be earning millions of hao123 to the price of 12 million yuan to Baidu, and then with CAI win to start cooperation games site 4399, both people think it will be a new opportunity in the future. Xingping himself more introverted, once also like a loner, but he has a good learning ability, and CAI composition of the best partner, a person responsible for products, operations, a person responsible for strategy, financing, external cooperation, and the formation of a team, from the early individual combat mode. Today, 4399 is already the largest web gaming platform in China. Obviously, if Xingping insists on doing web site, surely there will be no success on the 4399.